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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28962405">I Don't Know How This River Runs (But I'd Like The Company)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Williamsaysgayrights/pseuds/Williamsaysgayrights'>Williamsaysgayrights</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Campaign (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, spoilers for ep 91!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:40:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,291</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28962405</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Williamsaysgayrights/pseuds/Williamsaysgayrights</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>William, Margaret, and what can happen if you fall in love.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Margaret/Travis Matagot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I Don't Know How This River Runs (But I'd Like The Company)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So ep 91 sure happened huh?</p>
<p>Changelily took over my brain and I wrote this, then cried at my phone for an hour because I just think they deserve nice things. Shoutout to the spoiler channel in the uwuru for making the end of the ep sadder than it had any right to be I love you guys &lt;3</p>
<p>Once again edited by the amazing Rowan (DrowningInStarlights), who is an amazing writer too &lt;3</p>
<p>Title from Grow as we Go by Ben Platt</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They sit together on the riverbank, William in the arms of his Margaret, and he’s falling asleep to the feeling of her fingers brushing through his hair. It’s quiet here, peaceful in a way their lives tend not to be. She knows that soon she’ll hold him as he changes, trying to soothe his pain any way she can, but until then, they can just sit beside the river, bound only by the love they share, nothing planned except being together. </p>
<p>William sits up suddenly, and holds his hand out to her. “Oh dearheart, would you care for a dance?” he asks, and she sees the love he holds for her in his eyes. </p>
<p>Margaret laughs, takes his hand as he brings her in close, and they dance, staring into each other’s eyes. As they finish, William brings her in close, wrapping his arms around her, and she thinks about how she could stay like this forever, basking in sunlight and drowning in love. </p>
<p>——</p>
<p>William doesn’t dance anymore after that. </p>
<p>Gable asks him to at one point, in some bar he can’t remember the name of, and he snaps at them, the loss still deep and raw. He goes off to sit in a corner, drinking alone and pretending that nobody can see him cry. They don’t ask him again.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>One day, Margaret does a reading for him. She pulls three cards, and flips them over to show him his fate. The Rake, the River and the Union. She watches him trace his hand over the last card, a small smile on his face, and decides she’s tired of waiting. </p>
<p>“Love? Can we get married?” she says. She watches him freeze, and she knows enough about his past to know he needs comfort, that marriage and family isn’t something he can do without the reassurance that she won’t leave him, that they’ll be together for as long as they can be. She gently reaches out for his hand, and holds it - for him, this is grounding, and it keeps him with her while he ponders her question. </p>
<p>William relaxes slightly as she takes it. When he smiles at her, she knows that if she was lost, all she would have to do is look for his smile to find her way home. “Well I don’t know, <i>can</i> we?” he says. </p>
<p>She pushes him into the river, her hand still clasped around his, and laughs at the look on his face when she pulls him back up. He pulls her in after him, still hand in hand as she shrieks, their laughter a birdsong in the summer breeze. </p>
<p>Eventually, they stop laughing, looking into each other’s eyes. Marriage can wait, she thinks, because no matter what happens, there will <i>always</i> be moments like this, and nothing can take away that happiness. </p>
<p>If only she’d known what the other cards would mean for them. </p>
<p>——</p>
<p>William lies on the bank of the river alone, a hand in the water, waiting for Margaret to grab him and pull herself up beside him. He sits there, starving, hoping that this is the time, she’ll either step out of the river and be beside him again, or he’ll die here before the Forest Queen can turn him to keep him alive. Whichever way it goes, eventually he’ll be with Margaret again. He doesn’t mind how it happens. </p>
<p>Slowly he comes back to himself, and stands. It’s morning, and even though he doesn’t know how long he’s been lying there, he somehow knows she isn’t coming back. So he walks, leaving a part of William to rot on the shore without his Margaret, walking out of the forest with nothing but his broken heart. </p>
<p> He’s never going to love again. </p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Whoever he is now, it isn’t William, or Jolly Jack, or whoeverthefuck he’s been over the last century. Gable sits opposite him in this bar, watching him drink. He thinks they’d get it, if he told them about Mar... about her. He hasn’t said her name for years, and Gable is… well. He doesn’t know if they can keep secrets like he can, even if he trusts them. They’re similar, though - two broken things hiding from everything that's ever mattered to them. He wonders if they’ve ever loved someone enough to destroy everything else they’ve known. If they, like him, would drown just to feel loved again. </p>
<p>He wonders what they know about him, this person they keep running into over and over again, nothing between them but shared time and different regrets. Has he ever mentioned her when they’d been drinking together? Did he tell them about what it felt like to kiss her, to feel her fingers through his hair, to be held in her arms? He thinks he hasn’t, but there’s no telling what he might say if they ask him now. He’s never been one for vulnerability, no matter how much the part of him that’s still William disagrees.</p>
<p>“You know what, Gable?” he says, raising his glass to them and smirking. “Here’s to being lonely.”</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Travis likes his new name. He thinks it makes him sound <i>cool</i>, like he’d be able to walk into a place he isn’t allowed into and demand anything he wants at just the drop of his name. Gable calls him an idiot, but he knows they’re just continuing their game of insults. He tries not to think about who started it, about the person who made him comfortable enough to sling insults back and forth. </p>
<p>He tries not to think about how he can’t remember her voice. </p>
<p>He isn’t alone, anymore - Gable has been annoying him for <i>so long</i>, and he thinks they’re safe to keep close. They can’t die, after all, no matter how many times he jokes about killing them. If anything, they’ll annoy each other so much it’ll take them centuries to speak to each other again. Somehow, he’s grown fond of his best annoyance, and they’ve grown fond of him. </p>
<p>She would’ve loved them too. </p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Travis isn’t himself when he walks into Nordia. He’s vulnerable, he’s missing a <i>fucking hand, what the fuck</i>, and he finds himself struggling to push William and his stupid emotions down long enough to pretend they don’t exist. Then he enters the shrine, and all of it bursts up to the surface, and it’s the remnants of a broken William that look at the woman in front of him. </p>
<p>It <i>can’t</i> be her, he knows this, and yet, as she sits, silent and calm and <i>so very familiar</i>, he can’t help himself. </p>
<p>“Margaret?”</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>She wasn’t supposed to be working, and yet, that <i>voice</i> sounded so broken, so familiar in a way she doesn’t understand. She turns, and the man in the doorway looks at her, hope written clear across his face. He mustn’t see what he expects to, the hope retreating into what she assumes is several layers of repression. That’s fine. She can deal with that. </p>
<p>She doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that he feels important to her, that there’s something missing here. When she tears her Changeling card, she realises that there's more to this man than she first thought. She feels a strange, inexplicable surge of affection for him that fades quickly, and she turns back to him, her eyes widening as she looks into his. </p>
<p>She didn’t expect to ever see someone like Travis Matagot cry.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>She helps him. Of course she does, he’s broken and she helps broken things. She learns about his Margaret, about who Travis really is, what he’s willing to do for the people he cares about.</p>
<p>She can’t help Gable, but she likes them. She likes watching the two of them argue, throwing insults back and forth like they’ve been doing it for years is fun. She wonders why Travis flinches when Gable brings up his past, but she doesn’t ask why. She knows from experience that the past is a difficult thing, especially when that past involves so much loss and suffering. </p>
<p>She doesn’t know when she learned that.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>He’s watching the end of another Boganalia, everyone around him dancing and sharing both good and bad bogwine. He should be celebrating, and yet, for some reason, the thought of dancing again still makes him feel sick. The ache is lessened now, thanks to Margaret, but it’s still enough to hurt. He thinks about his wife, how they’d dance in the sunlight, the way she’d smile as he held her close, and <i>fuck</i>, this is too much, he can’t pretend to be okay when— </p>
<p>A hand slides into his. </p>
<p>“Well, it would be rude if we didn’t dance, don’t you agree? We are guests, aren’t we?”</p>
<p>He turns to look at Margaret, and she patiently waits for him to process what she’s said. <i>Fuck</i>, he thinks, <i>how does she know how to pull me back</i>? He can feel their connection, her magic weaving around him and carving a path back into the present, to the version of Margaret standing in front of him. </p>
<p>After a moment, he smiles, taking her hand and walking into the crowd. </p>
<p>It would be painful if she hadn’t led their dance, too many memories tangled up in Margaret, <i>his</i> Margaret, wrapped in his embrace as they waltz around the forest. But she leads, and he follows her steps, eventually breaking off to teach her a dance from his home that young William learned so many years ago. She laughs, pulls him back in, and when the song ends she dips him, locking eyes with him. They’re so <i>familiar</i>, the same eyes he’d fallen in love with, and as she pulls him back up to bring him close to her, Travis tries to pretend his blush is from the dancing. </p>
<p>——</p>
<p>“Oh, so you’ll dance with her and not me, huh?”</p>
<p>“Shut up, Gable.”</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>She leaves, taking a letter and making a promise. He knows that she isn’t truly gone, that getting to say goodbye is a mercy he wasn’t sure he’d ever have. But she smiles, kisses him goodbye, and then heads off with the Goose, going to help another broken thing. He’ll miss her, obviously - Travis was never good at holding William back, and now that someone like Margaret has touched his life again, he can’t help but think about what could have been if William hadn’t drowned alongside her. </p>
<p>Eventually, he’s alone, and he thinks of her, everything that made her so familiar, so comforting to be around, to hold, <i>to be held by—</i></p>
<p>And it all drops into place, and Travis seals away the part of him that’s still William, that wants to go after her so deeply he feels it in his bones. He can’t do this now, and he promised - one day he will go look for her, his Margaret, <i>his wife, how didn’t he see—</i></p>
<p>But not today. </p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Margaret left him behind to continue doing her work, she knows this, so <i>why</i> does she feel like she’s leaving him for the second time in her life? She introduces herself to the crew of the Goose, and throughout this she thinks of Travis, of what he’s doing without her. She longs to go back, to seek out the familiar comfort of his arms, but <i>why?</i> Why did seeing him for the first time make her think <i>oh, it’s you?</i></p>
<p>She doesn’t make it through the letter. She doesn’t know what to think of how suddenly everything can change when you’re faced with the truth, when it reaches up and grabs you and pulls you under. </p>
<p>But this time, the river is <i>hers</i> to command, and she won’t let it take from her again. </p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Margaret finds herself in a market a year later, weaving her way around the people shopping. She doesn’t know what compelled her to come here - she felt the pull on her magic and came. She doesn’t want to dwell on the fact that it felt familiar, or that her connection to Travis, to <i>William</i>, feels stronger than it did in Nordia. </p>
<p>She takes in the sights around her, trying not to look for familiar faces. After almost one hundred years of life, she knows that hope isn’t something that can sustain a person - she’d rather go for magic, a connection, a promise. She stops at a stall selling watches, and reaches out to touch one. It’s silver, and has a raven etched onto the face. It reminds her of him, and she smiles, thinking about how he blushed while dancing together in Nordia, and what he’d look like if she bought him a gift. </p>
<p>A hand comes out of the crowd and also reaches for it, and sits on top of hers over the watch. Margaret goes to pull her hand back, to apologise, when she looks, <i>properly</i> looks, at the hand on hers. The glove is so very familiar, the sleeve on the coat she had seen up close several times— she quickly turns, and she feels the pull of her magic grow stronger as she looks at the figure in front of her. Travis stares back, still holding her hand, and for a moment they stand there, looking into each other’s eyes. </p>
<p>Travis - no, not Travis, <i>William</i> - tentatively smiles at her, fear and hope clashing in his eyes like the river they faced so long ago. She looks into his eyes, his smile, and knows that she was right - seeing him feels like coming home. She smiles back, turning her hand over to tangle their fingers together, letting her power course through their union. The magic tightens in threads around them, binding them together, and she wraps her other arm around him, finally embracing her love. </p>
<p>This time, nobody has to let go.</p>
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